The Good Old Days and Now

The "Good Old Days" and Now

What was fishing the Au Sable like in the "good old days?" I don't know, because I wasn't there, but I know what it was like in the early Sixties. By today's standards it was nothing short of phenomenal. Let me tell you about a few experiences.

Like the time I put in at what was then called the "Public Fishing Site" below Stephan's Bridge. (Did you know that the areas now called "Public Access Sites" or "Canoe Access Sites" were bought with fishing license money, and were originally intended to be restricted to anglers? You needed a fishing license to even enter many of them.) I fished up to the bridge that morning. I don't remember the exact time of the year, but the irises (now gone) were blooming on the island just below Gates Lodge. I had a remarkable experience fishing the eight-inch deep water along the edge of that island (that's the left bank as you face upstream), just about a foot away from the irises. No flies were hatching, but I caught seven fish between thirteen and sixteen inches on a size eighteen dry fly in water about twenty feet along that shore. I also hooked and lost several others in the same size range. The only thing that kept a hooked fish from spooking the others was that each of them rushed into the deep water as soon as it was hooked.

Then there was another time during the Hendrickson hatch that three friends and I fished from that same site up to Bernie Fowler's. We all had our limits of five fish by then, with the smallest about twelve inches, and the largest about sixteen. And then there were three fantastic evenings during the pale evening dun hatch in the hole in front of Dick Williams' cabin which is opposite the Keystone Landing campground - three successive five-fish limits with none under fourteen inches.

The fish in these catches were mostly browns with an occasional rainbow. There were, of course, other times when we caught mostly brook trout, which were smaller and a lot easier to catch. It seemed that you could always catch several nine- to ten-inch brookies no matter how bad the conditions. (The size limit on all trout was ten inches. Brook trout this size disappeared the first year the DNR dropped the size limit.)

I'm telling you about these catches now, not to brag, because they were exceptional even then, but to point out that it was possible for such catches in the Sixties. I defy anyone to duplicate any of them today, even during a whole season, or several seasons, of steady fishing in the same water.

The question is: What has happened?

Clearly the number of large, say over twelve-inches, fish is not what it used to be. The DNR's shock data have shown a pronounced decline in the number of larger fish. The reasons for this are not completely clear and there are different arguments for it. I don't want to get into that here. What I would like to point out is something I think most people, including the biologists, don't realize: the fishing - and by this I mean daytime fishing for trout of reasonable size - has fallen off much more rapidly than has the fish population.

As I write this I don't know exactly what the DNR's estimates for the decrease in the number of large fish is, but just for the sake of argument, let's say that it may be one half, or maybe, one quarter, of what it used to be. The exact number doesn't matter. Judging from my records, and to a certain extent, memories, the fishing is less than five percent of what it used to be, and I think that number is probably a considerable over-estimate. It seems that the remaining large fish in the river just do not feed in the daytime, which is when ninety-five percent or more of the fishing is done. The free-rising, daylight-feeding fish that we used to catch are gone, and I am ashamed to say that I killed many of them.

So another question now is: What can be done about it?

Catch-and-release is certainly a first step, but those of you who expect great things from it are almost certain to be disappointed. If it is enforced, the most likely first effect to come from it will be a modest increase in the number and size of the brook trout that are caught. These fish have been taking a tremendous beating for many years now, with anglers keeping small brookies in place of the browns and rainbows they have not been catching. Because the remaining browns in the river are nocturnal in their habits, I strongly suspect that the return of free-rising, daylight-feeding browns will be very slow indeed. So slow, in fact, to cause me to worry that catch-and-release will be declared a failure because of it.

The answer, I think, is one to which many of you will object on the basis of principle. The answer is re-stocking the river.

Now before you start objecting, hear me out. I, too, prefer to catch wild fish, but the situation on the river is desperate. Many people who used to fish the river feel that it is not worth fishing anymore, and I can't say that they are entirely wrong. If that situation continues, you can be guaranteed that the no-kill regulations will be done away with at the end of the first test period. We desperately need to get people back fishing the river, and catching fish. We have to show the Grayling Chamber of Commerce that fishing is good for business. And putting fish into the river is not all that bad. After all, that's how the trout got into the river in the first place! As we all know the Au Sable is not a natural trout stream.

Also, I'm not suggesting the kind of put-and-take hatchery stocking so many of us find objectionable. What is needed is the introduction of a fairly large number of mature fish from wild, free-rising stocks, such as are found in the great trout streams of the west. The introduction of such fish would do two things. First, it would instantly improve the fishing, because mature fish (perhaps in the fourteen- to eighteen-inch size range) would be used. Second, with strictly enforced catch-and-release regulations, these fish would be available to spawn and hybridize with the existing stock in the river during the first fall spawning season. It may be that one would want to repeat the stocking process each year for two or three years to modify the whole population.

I know that biologists make their living by doing experiments. I am a scientist myself, and well understand the need for that. However, what the Au Sable does not need right now are scientific experiments. The clock is ticking on catch-and-release.

We cannot afford the time to do experiments to see which fish are best to introduce into the river. If genetic experiments are to be done with the fish, they should be of the "shotgun" type, in which all likely candidates are crossed indiscriminately with all other candidates without attempting to segregate and study the offspring. The purpose should be to get mature fish from free-rising stocks, and get them into the river as quickly as possible. To do otherwise is to court disaster. RWOL

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